


Hide and Seek

by martialartist816



Series: Misadventures of a Prince and His Knight [4]
Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: First Kiss, Hide and Seek, Humor, M/M, Making Out, One Shot, everyone likes to pick on callum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 11:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17446337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martialartist816/pseuds/martialartist816
Summary: Long hours in the Banther Lodge are conducive to boredom. Long hours in the Banther Lodge, Soren and Callum learn, are also conducive to learning new things in a dark closet.





	Hide and Seek

“And I ended up saying ‘stish ficks’ instead of ‘fish sticks’,” Claudia delivers to her audience of two princes, who start giggling. “I swear, Opeli looked like she wanted to banish me from the kingdom right then and there. Right, Soren?”

“What?” Even sitting next to his sister on one of two couches in front of the fireplace, the princes occupying the other, Soren still doesn’t hear her.

“Were you even listening?” Claudia asks, snapping her fingers right next to Soren’s ear to garner a response.

And respond he does, by slapping at her hand and frowning.

“I was there. I don’t need to listen.”

“You’re ruining my fun,” Claudia says.

“Listening to you butcher the English language is not _fun_ ,” Soren counters.

“I thought her story was fun,” Ezran defends.

“You’re just grumpy because there isn’t anything out here to stab, Sor-bear.” Claudia messes up Soren’s hair, making her voice gruff and teasing when she says his nickname. Soren doesn’t even have the energy to protest the name-calling or the hair-messing.

“There isn’t anything out here to do anything! I’m bored. I can’t believe our dads agreed it would be a good idea to spend a week out here in the middle of winter.” Soren gestures around them at the massive, empty Banther Lodge. The four of them have huddled together in front of the fire in a valiant attempt to make the place feel smaller and less... middle-of-nowhere-y.

“We could go outside and make snowmen! Then you’d have something to stab, Soren,” Ezran suggests. Which doesn’t sound too bad, actually.

“Yeah! And I could have something to practice sword fighting on without hurting myself,” Callum says.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?” Soren asks, drawing his eyebrows up at the step-prince.

“Well, technically our vacation won’t start until the king gets here in a few days,” Callum points out.

“But with how long his meetings might last, that could be forever,” Claudia reminds them all.

Right. They’re alone in the lodge, just the four of them, until King Harrow and General Amaya arrive later that week. If only Viren would allow his kids a break without having to tack on the responsibility of prince-sitting along with it.

“So we might as well make the best of it,” Ezran says. The yellow toad grumbles in agreement. “Bait wants to play hide and seek!”

“Ooh, that’s a great idea,” Claudia chimes.

“Don’t even think about using magic to cheat.” Soren shoots her a glare, and the guilty look on her face informs him that she had definitely planned on using magic to cheat.

“There you go, ruining my fun again,” she admonishes.

“Or, and hear me out for a sec, we could not play any dumb games,” Soren provides.

“I don’t know. It might make the time go by faster,” Callum says.

Soren meets his gaze, and he’s lost this battle because he’s got the most annoying soft spot for the older prince.

“That, or we could tell ghost stories.” Ezran grins devilishly and forms his fist into a little claw. Soren can see Callum swallow from the other couch.

“Hide and seek,” Soren and Callum say at the same time.

“Yes! I nominate Callum to be the seeker first,” Ezran says.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the worst at it.”

“Hey.”

“This place is huge,” Claudia says, smiling. “I can’t wait to see how many secret passages there are to hide in.”

“Great,” Callum groans. “A giant lodge means more trouble for _me_ trying to find everyone.”

“And you should be _blindfolded!_ ” Ezran adds in excitement. The burp from the toad sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

“Are you crazy? It’ll be impossible to find anyone like that! And what if I fall down the stairs or something?” Callum refutes, looking like he might actually fear for his life.

The three of them all bounce ideas off each other, sentences overlapping, as they discuss the logistics of this ridiculous game. Soren entertains the thought of Callum in a blindfold. Because if the seeker can’t see, then the night could be as good as saved. Soren would be free to just sneak off to his room and work out, or sleep, or both—not necessarily at the same time.

This evening is starting to look up. Soren is actually grinning in delight when he tunes back in to the conversation.

Half listening, it sounds like they all agree that the second floor is off-limits, but all closed doors are fair game. Even better. If upstairs is a no-go during the game, then Soren has a clear shot from this couch to his comfy, warm, solitary bed.

“My own scarf, turned against me,” Callum sighs when Soren ties the red fabric around his head.

“Can’t see, can you?” Ezran asks. “You’re not allowed to peek.”

“I won’t, Ez,” Callum promises, tired.

He reaches his hands out in front of him, trying to feel for the couch he just stood from. His first step forward lands his shin against the hard wooden base of it, and he groans.

“This is already going badly for me,” he mumbles.

“It’s fair because now you can’t rely on Bait’s glowing to find him,” Ezran says.

“Like the frog actually cares about playing hide and seek,” Soren jokes.

He instantly regrets it the moment the toad glares at him with revenge in his eyes.

“Count to thirty,” Soren tells Callum, patting his shoulder.

When his sister and the younger prince dash off to find hiding places, Soren takes his leisure and strolls off toward the kitchen. If he’s going to hide out in his room for the rest of the night, he may as well bring some snacks.

The barren cupboards leave him slim pickings. With each empty cabinet Soren opens, his options for food dwindle. So far, dinner looks like it’ll be stale bread and a jar of fruit preserves.

All his rummaging draws the attention, naturally, of the seeker who is relying on his ears to find his friends. Callum stumbles into the kitchen like a freshly born calf. If his gangly limbs didn’t make him look and move like a colt before, his lack of sight definitely adds to the image now. Soren smiles, arms full of his journey’s spoils, and thinks that Callum is as cute as he is dumb.

He’s not worried about getting caught. No—his ninja-like movements will spare him from detection. So he watches Callum circle the large kitchen island, knees apart and arms forward like he’s prepared to be tackled. Soren stalks him in a circle on silent feet. Callum’s mutterings and obvious discomfort make this show all the more entertaining.

“Ow,” Callum says when his ankle catches the corner of the island. He gropes around until he grasps the edge of the counter with both hands. “Stupid furniture. Stupid blindfold…”

Soren doesn’t conceal his laugh. Listening to the prince talk to himself is a treat he wasn’t expecting to hear today. Callum tenses and whirls around toward the direction of Soren’s snickering.

“Who’s there?” he asks, voice going low like it does when he’s pretending he’s not scared.

“Catch me to find out,” Soren teases.

“Soren!” Callum stands a little straighter, smiling. “You lose.”

“Nope,” Soren dismisses. “You have to touch me to consider it a win.”

“What? That’s not a rule.” Callum’s arms go out again, and he begins a slow trail in the direction of Soren.

“It’s totally a rule,” Soren says.

He isn’t rushing to avoid capture. He takes lazy steps backward so that Callum’s searching hands barely miss him each time. When he doesn’t talk, Callum can’t find him. It would be so easy to sneak out and disappear upstairs, leaving Callum with only a taste of victory and wholly unsatisfied. It’s too fun watching Callum believe he actually has a chance at beating Soren in a game of agility.

“Come on. Touch me.”

“I would if you would just stop _moving_ ,” Callum groans. “I’m pretty sure that hiders aren’t allowed to leave their spots.”

“I’m not a hider. What if I wanted you to find me?”

For some reason lost on Soren, Callum shudders. He adjusts his trajectory toward where he hears Soren sliding the jar of preserves across the counter. The jar nudges against Callum’s finger, his hand resting on the wood. He touches all over the glass to find out what it is, then frowns in Soren’s general direction.

“What is this?”

“A distraction,” is all Soren offers before falling deathly silent again.

“Very funny,” Callum says, picking up his pace to walk as fast as he dares. _Someone_ is determined to finish this game, but Soren, who is having far too much fun for this to end, has other plans.

Hopping up on the island, Soren creeps over and places himself directly behind the prince. Even with his larger size, it’s still too easy to sneak up on poor, unsuspecting Callum. A wicked, satisfied smile spreads on his face as he leans down and blows air across Callum’s ear.

“Ah!” the prince yelps, spinning around so fast that Soren almost catches a hand in the jaw. He backs away just far enough to narrowly avoid capture.

“Touch me,” he repeats in a low voice.

“Stop saying that.”

“Why? You don’t want to touch me?”

If anything, Soren is so glad to see the reaction on Callum’s face. A blush forms on his cheeks, directly below his scarf blindfold and just as red. His shoulders go rigid, and he stomps his foot quite adorably.

“I will touch you,” Callum declares, frustrated. “It’ll be when I strangle you.”

With newfound focus—Soren might even be prompted to say confidence—Callum walks forward to his antagonist with arms outstretched. Confidence proves not enough, sadly. Callum still can’t connect his ears to his brain and misses Soren by a mile.

“I’m not certain you’d be able to win at hide and seek even with your eyes,” Soren says.

“I’d like to see how well you’d fare in a blindfold!” Callum says. The realization comes two seconds too late. “I didn’t mean it like that. Wipe that smile off your face.”

“I’m not smiling,” Soren responds, smiling.

“I can hear you smiling.” The prince makes a daring leap forward, and Soren has to admit that it’s a close call. The wind kicked up by Callum’s flailing arms brushes over Soren’s shirt.

“You’re just projecting.”

“Keep talking. You’re making it easy to locate you.” Callum’s hands get grabby, and Soren kind of wants to be in his clutches. What he’d give to have the whole lodge for just themselves.

“I’m quaking,” Soren says with a roll of his eyes.

“Oh, I intimidate you?” Callum’s eyebrows shoot up from under the blindfold, a cocky grin forming on his lips. That expression torments Soren, and combined with the lilt in Callum’s question, he’s a total goner.

“You do, but not for the reasons you think,” Soren answers.

Before Callum can ask for an elaboration, Soren descends on him. He crowds close in Callum’s space, breaks the delicate barrier and effectively loses the game by gripping Callum’s waist. The prince tenses in surprise, not expecting contact and quite literally blind to Soren’s swift movements. His hands come up to the scarf, but Soren takes his wrists instead.

Callum stands there, speechless, waiting to find out what Soren plans on doing with him. Judging by the blush on his face, Soren can guess what things might be on his mind.

The worst Soren does is lean down between Callum’s frozen hands and place a kiss on his mouth. He feels the breath Callum takes in, feels the air pulled from his own throat. It doesn’t last long—it doesn’t need to—but the effect is immediate. Soren’s work is done.

“Touched you,” Callum whispers, his smug smile gradually finding its home again on his face.

“Like hell I’m going to be the seeker now,” Soren says.

“Rules are rules, Soren.”

“You and I are the only ones who know you found me first. What’ll it take for you to go back out there and look for Claudia or Ezran instead?”

“You’re not getting out of seeker duty just because of… that.”

That _kiss_ , Soren finishes in his head. His lips still tingle from the sweet, tragically brief contact.

“Humor me, prince,” Soren proposes. “If you find someone else to be the seeker, then we can go hide somewhere else. Somewhere dark. All alone. Just the two of us.”

His finger hooks in the red scarf, and he pulls it down just enough for Callum to peek at his sly smirk. Callum’s green eyes dart down to Soren’s mouth, then back up.

“... I’m listening.”

“I think I saw Claudia run into the front library,” is all Soren offers before replacing the scarf and plunging the prince into blindness once again.

However long it took for the entire exchange between Soren and Callum to happen, it takes twice as long for Callum to actually find and tag Claudia. It’s a miracle that everyone still has the energy to keep playing. Really, Callum is terrible at seeking.

Claudia gets a second reminder that using magic to find hiders is considered cheating, a notion which she dismisses with a wave of her hand and an exasperated “pffft.” Soren assumes his bored expression the whole time the four of them are talking, but as soon as Claudia starts counting—red scarf covering her eyes—he grabs Callum by the wrist and hauls him off.

The last Soren sees of Ezran, the young prince is running toward a bookshelf with cabinets in the lower half. Soren guides Callum to the opposite end of the massive first floor. With the first door he opens, he’s not sure what he’s hoping to find, but the supply closet he’s presented with is as good a place as any.

With the two of them occupying the tiny space, the door closing them into darkness save the firelight leaking from underneath the frame, it’s a tight fit. Not that Soren thinks they need much space anyway.

“You don’t think she’ll find us in here?” Callum asks.

Soren’s eyes haven’t adjusted yet, but the prince’s voice sounds close, eager.

“If anyone’s more dense than you, it’s Claudia. We’ll be fine.”

“I think that’s supposed to be ‘denser’.”

Soren can’t even be bothered by the rules of grammar, not with how tersely their bodies are pressed together. Callum’s frame is a welcome weight against Soren’s chest and hips. His back presses to the door, so if someone opens it, he’s screwed. But who has time to worry about that? Certainly not Soren, now that he’s finally got Callum all to himself.

At last, something to make this _vacation_ interesting.

“Just keep quiet, and she’ll be none the wiser,” Soren says, fingers finding Callum’s soft cheek and sliding into his hair.

The prince presses closer to him still. Soren can feel the nerves rolling off of him in waves, and if he’s honest with himself, he’s a little nervous about this too. Excited. He’s never done something like this before, the possibility of getting caught making him want to continue even more.

When he dips down to seek out Callum’s mouth, the prince helps him along. They almost bump noses, and Soren accidentally kisses the corner of Callum’s mouth before finding his true target. But the dark closet lights up in sparks when they get it right. Callum stands on his toes, letting himself rest against Soren as his fingers clutch his sleeves. Soren’s free arm wraps around Callum.

He gets a chance to do what he couldn’t in the kitchen and tastes inside Callum’s mouth. The prince opens up to Soren and goes along with anything he tries. It’s a learning process for both of them. Eventually Callum demonstrates a well-placed confidence when he reciprocates the ministrations, tongue surging forward so he can get his own taste of the knight.

Soren makes a sound—completely on accident—resulting in a set of teeth coming down around his lower lip. Callum bites him, not to the point of pain, but just enough so that Soren knows it’s intentional and maybe Callum has a good instinct for this kind of thing. Soren’s hand drifts down Callum’s back. He palms the thin body through his clothes, surpassing his backside and cupping the back of his thigh. Callum gets the hint from there, proceeding to slowly drag his knee up Soren’s side until their hips are slotted together. Soren leaves his hand hooked around the back of Callum’s raised knee for no purpose other than keeping himself sane.

Time becomes an anomaly, and the need to breathe dwindles into a distant memory. All Soren knows is the taste of the price and the feel of him under his hands. Despite Callum’s bravery in the face of intimacy, he can still be—Soren learns with pleasure—coaxed into making the cutest and hottest whimpering sounds. It just takes a certain angle of Soren’s head, a press of his tongue, a roll of his hips, and Callum gasps and wordlessly begs for him to do it all again.

Callum’s hands advance on Soren’s body. They bury themselves in his hair and find a home there.

Everything is perfect. This prince is perfect. Soren starts to look forward to the entire remainder of the week they have to themselves in this big, dumb, oak lodge.

Everything is perfect. But the door opening behind Soren and sending his world off-kilter is totally not perfect.

He hits the ground with a thud, the wind getting knocked out of him. Callum lands on top of him, and thank the heavens the prince is granted such a soft pillow to fall on.

They look up at the same time, Soren having to tilt his head all the way back. He’s greeting with the upside down sight of his sister peeking out from under the scarf, jaw hitting the floor.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Soren and Callum say at the same time.


End file.
